Colonial America – It’s Tea Time!

The early settlers brought the enjoyment of drinking of tea, coffee and chocolate from their homelands. The Dutch introduced it to the English around 1600′s but by the middle of the 1700′s it was an established drink that the whole family could partake in. Chocolate was something only the wealthy could afford but tea and coffee were available for all. It is thought that 2 million pounds of tea was consumed by the colonist. That’s a lot of tea!

Today children don’t usually drink tea or coffee, so setting up a table with tea, sugar, honey and cream for them to sample can be a fun experiment. You might want to have a selection of teas: perhaps a black tea, green tea and a spiced tea like chai. Use the graph for children to fill in what tea they liked the most. Expect there to be a lot of conversation on the merits of each kind of tea and excitement to try the teas!